[Gaming] Elder Scrolls 5 - Dawnguard is HERE!

GasBandit

Staff member
As dumb as the whole pony fixation of the moment is, I did chuckle at seeing the pony pick up the guard by mouth and shake it to death.
 
I've finally, after like 3 restarts and 200 hours of playing, decided to actually play through the main storyline. The peace talks at Hrothgar had been my favorite moment so far.

Arch-Mage Heradrath DEMANDS PEACE!

 
Wait....you can have peace talks?
It's more of a temporary truce. Basically if the war is still happening...

Balgruuf will not allow you to utilize Dragonsreach to catch the dragon you need to find Alduin, as he is to worried about getting attacked. You can go to either the Blades, Greybeards, or Parthenax, and they will say the best thing they can try to do is make a temporary peace treaty. That is what the peace talks are for. If you instead join a side and defeat the other before reaching the Dragonsreach quest, then you just skip the treaty quest and go right to the capture quest.

One you defeat Alduin and the main questline ends, you can take up the war quests once more.
 
Somehow my skooma quest was broken. And I could not buy the house and become thane. I cheated at that point and gave myself the key and made myself thane through console commands.

Now I can't decorate Honeyside. Any of you know how to trigger the different decorations in Riften?
 
Got most of the way through the main dragon born portion of the plot on my heavy armor/2-handed character and started to feel like I'd rushed to the conclusion of the game and hadn't really explored/branched out. Yes, I know, with such a free-form plot system it's my own damn fault for not branching out more, but since I was having so much trouble with the game to begin with, I went with what I found to be the easiest combination of weapons and armor. Now that I've had a lot more practice (4 snow days last week plus the weekend led to a lot of time to play), I decided to start from the beginning and play a thief/assassin; and avoid the dragon born portion of the plot as long as I can (aside from the initial visit to the greybeards, so I can get my Shout on). It's been a lot more enjoyable, and a lot more challenging. Especially when I was in Solitude trying to break into a store and a guard heard me snap my lockpick off in the lock, causing me to have to walk to Morthal before I could fast travel out of the area.

Now the only problem is that my wife bought a copy of the game as well, and is apparently one of the victims of the "my computer, which should be able to run this game flawlessly, keeps turning off whenever I try to play it" bug that no one has a fix for. Maybe we'll get lucky and patch 1.4 will correct it. Of course, it'll probably break all of my mods, but I'd rather have to play modless than have her not be able to play at all. Lord knows we can't afford an even newer computer for her to be able to play - especially since there are people posting that they have screaming gaming rigs and get the same crashes, so there's no guarantee that upgrading would do a damn bit of good.
 

Dave

Staff member
Peace...talks....

I've played this game through 3 times now and have never gotten that far without choosing a side.
 
So looks like the Creation Kit is coming out by the end of the month. For whatever reason, the console versions are going to be release versions, while the PC version is going to be a Beta. Does anyone else find that a little odd?
 
I've done just about everything there is to do in the game, besides the Mage's College and Bard's College... also I've not leveled a mage past lvl 14 or so.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Got most of the way through the main dragon born portion of the plot on my heavy armor/2-handed character and started to feel like I'd rushed to the conclusion of the game and hadn't really explored/branched out. Yes, I know, with such a free-form plot system it's my own damn fault for not branching out more, but since I was having so much trouble with the game to begin with, I went with what I found to be the easiest combination of weapons and armor. Now that I've had a lot more practice (4 snow days last week plus the weekend led to a lot of time to play), I decided to start from the beginning and play a thief/assassin; and avoid the dragon born portion of the plot as long as I can (aside from the initial visit to the greybeards, so I can get my Shout on). It's been a lot more enjoyable, and a lot more challenging.
Me and a couple other guys here did that too. My first character was a sword'n'board melee tank, and by 30 I was murdering entire towns. It took a little longer (and was a little more fancy), but now I'm 50, every draugr is a death lord and I haven't met the being I couldn't 2-shot from stealth.

To bring the challenge back, I changed disciplines (but not characters). Now I'm 50-something 1-hand and shield, and I'm trying to boost up the magic skills.

And I still haven't gone further than Kynesgrove on the main quest. I'm starting to wonder if I will, before 81.

Also I'm worried 81 won't give me enough points to buy every perk. I suppose that only makes sense, but dammit I was under the mistaken impression that I'd be able to get ALL the perks legitimately and I WANTS IT.
 
Me and a couple other guys here did that too. My first character was a sword'n'board melee tank, and by 30 I was murdering entire towns. It took a little longer (and was a little more fancy), but now I'm 50, every draugr is a death lord and I haven't met the being I couldn't 2-shot from stealth.

To bring the challenge back, I changed disciplines (but not characters). Now I'm 50-something 1-hand and shield, and I'm trying to boost up the magic skills.

And I still haven't gone further than Kynesgrove on the main quest. I'm starting to wonder if I will, before 81.

Also I'm worried 81 won't give me enough points to buy every perk. I suppose that only makes sense, but dammit I was under the mistaken impression that I'd be able to get ALL the perks legitimately and I WANTS IT.
Yeah, a big part of why I changed characters was because I just felt like there was so much that I'd missed out on, and so many perk trees that I hadn't even touched. I'd done a lot of the misc. quests, chosen a side and completed that quest-line, was a member of the four minor-ish organizations, had three houses, had really actually done a lot, but it just felt like there was so much more that I could have done, instead of oh-so-carefully making sure that I never did anything but wail on targets with my hammer and level up my two-handed and heavy armor skills and perk trees, back at the beginning. This time through I'm being a lot less careful about what sort of things I do that progress my character level (like when I bought 27 iron ingots and turned them all into lock-picks and leveled off of the blacksmithing levels at level 6). Honestly, I think part of the problem was that I'd done so many of the misc. quests and the imperial quest line and the main quest line that by the time I was getting close to the end of the dragon born questline, I'd barely scratched the surface of the various guild/college quests.

This time I want to really concentrate on those before I do much else. I've also gone companionless this time through, as much as possible. I don't know if the game is set up so that guards ignore Lydia when she's sneaking along behind me as I break into someone's home to steal from them or plant bogus evidence on them, but it got really annoying when I'd sneak up right behind someone, be ready to knife them in the back, and suddenly she'd swoop in from across the room and whack them with her axe, destroying my hiding job, so I sent her packing.

I tried just re-focusing my two-hander orc, but even with my dragonplate armor set being enchanted for maximum magic use, I wasn't having much luck killing things and upping my magic abilities with any school other than conjuring and resto, and even that was only because I had the bound battleaxe spell. And my attempt to refocus into sneaking was just pathetic.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I don't know if the game is set up so that guards ignore Lydia when she's sneaking along behind me as I break into someone's home to steal from them or plant bogus evidence on them, but it got really annoying when I'd sneak up right behind someone, be ready to knife them in the back, and suddenly she'd swoop in from across the room and whack them with her axe, destroying my hiding job, so I sent her packing.
Yeah, I gave Illia her walking papers last weekend too. Now that I can carry 415 pounds before potions myself and am independently wealthy (so I don't bother to pick up most of what I find), I don't need the pack mule any more, and she screws up/makes me reload because she jumped in front of me right as I fired my deadly stealthed arrow finally one time too many. Just me and Shadowmere. I leave him the hell outside so he doesn't mess up my stealth. heh.
 
Ya, you can't get all the perks illegitimately. There are like 250 perks, and you can only get 80.

This is why I broke down and downloaded Enhanced Perk Points. Not sure if I mentioned it before, but it's a Dragon Script modification that allows you to "Respec" your points through a keybind. The other feature it has is the ability to alter the amount of perk points you get, including adding some "base" perk points (ones you get when you first start the character) and bonus perk points (extra perk points you can gain every set amount of levels.) I use it mostly for the respec, since I can then alter my playstyle on a whim.

Enhanced Perk Points

For those purists that need a downside to respecs, you can even setup so respecs cost gold.
 

Dave

Staff member
I think the worst thing about a companion is if you accidentally do something like hit a guard you can normally diffuse the situation by sheathing. But if you have a companion they are all like, "WAAAAARGH!! KILL!!!" and there's nothing you can do.
Added at: 16:04
Ya, you can't get all the perks illegitimately. There are like 250 perks, and you can only get 80.

This is why I broke down and downloaded Enhanced Perk Points. Not sure if I mentioned it before, but it's a Dragon Script modification that allows you to "Respec" your points through a keybind. The other feature it has is the ability to alter the amount of perk points you get, including adding some "base" perk points (ones you get when you first start the character) and bonus perk points (extra perk points you can gain every set amount of levels.) I use it mostly for the respec, since I can then alter my playstyle on a whim.
Link you bastard! LIIIIINK!

Or maybe I'll just Google it.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I think if I make it to 81, I'll reward myself by using the console command to give myself as many points as I need to buy every perk. Call it... Talos 2.0. I've crossed the event horizon and ascended into godhood.
 
Link you bastard! LIIIIINK!
Added it.

Just make sure you have Script Dragon, it is required for the modification to work. If you want to utilize the "extra perk points" ability, you have to tweak the settings file that comes with the mod. The creator walks through that in the instructions.
 
Yeah, the companion system is kind of annoying to me, overall. Sure, they can be useful for carrying stuff around for you, and can help out if you get in over your head in a fight, but Lydia actually turned on me on my last character because I was using a fire cloak scroll and she walked into the aura, then walked into one of my melee attacks and got pissed off at me. So I killed her and left her there to rot. On the plus side, I didn't have to listen to any more of her disdainful "I'm sworn to carry your burdens," when I tried to update her gear or offload some junk.

Anyone know if there's a way in the game's preferences or any mods to turn off the inane random chatter from both companions and NPCs that you wander past on the street? I tend to miss a lot of the vocals from people I'm trying to talk to when I've got someone standing right next to me telling me for the thousandth time that "this war is as stupid as our feud with Clan Grey-Mane" or that they "used to be a member of the bard's college until their relationship to vaermina was discovered and they haven't been back to Solitude ever since" even though we've been to Solitude together 50 or 60 times. I don't mind some of the NPC chatter, like the guards (helpful to know if "they know who I am" if I've forgotten about a bounty against me in a specific town); but the rest is just driving me up the wall (but not enough to make me actually check the preferences or skyrimnexus).
Added at: 14:20
I think the worst thing about a companion is if you accidentally do something like hit a guard you can normally diffuse the situation by sheathing. But if you have a companion they are all like, "WAAAAARGH!! KILL!!!" and there's nothing you can do.
Added at: 16:04


Link you bastard! LIIIIINK!

Or maybe I'll just Google it.
Heh. Yeah, I noticed that right before sending Lydia packing on this character. I was on my way to beat someone to a pulp for failing to pay back the guild when I accidentally moved my mouse to the side and hovered over a bottle of mead and stole it. There was a guard in the inn, who immediately saw me take it, drew his sword, and killed me because my stupid housecarl refused to put her axe away - and you can't command them to do something in the middle of combat.
 
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